Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Friday, March 07, 2008
San Francisco's Hunters Point Punks
Question: What does San Quentin State Prison have in common with San Francisco's notorious Hunters Point Public Housing Project?
Answer: They both house the same punks. San Francisco's Hunters Point Public Housing Project is a finishing school for the droopy-panted two-bit gang-member punks who eventually shoot somebody and end up behind bars at San Quentin - which is precisely where they belong.
About the map: Hunters Point is the dark red area on the right lower side of the map, which is the Southeast portion of San Francisco.
The gangs at Hunters Point are so far below any normal social standard of human behavior that they are on par with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Not all America's enemies are oversees. The punks at Hunter's Point are, in many ways, only a few steps away from being vicious animals. When we bring our troops home from Baghdad, we're going to need to suit them up again with all their armor and weapons and send them into those projects to clean house. The SFPD (many of whom are honored and decorated American military veterans themselves) are out-gunned and out-numbered at Hunters Point.
MUNI runs hybrid buses throughout the entire City of San Francisco. Only near the Hunters Point projects do the punks run out while the buses are moving and flip outside emergency switches that instantly shut-off all power to the buses. According to numerous reports from drivers and complaints from terrified passengers, the two-way radio goes dead, all the lights go off, and if the bus is climbing a hill, it starts rolling backward. Passengers are afraid this will lead to brazen robberies where punks armed with semi-automatic weapons board the buses.
Who is responsible for dealing with these criminals? It should be the job of the parents, but many of the parents are little more than old punks themselves. In Hunters Point, crime, vandalism, murder, disrespect, ignorance, stupidity, hatred, violence and animal behavior is commonplace. Hunters Point is the single most dangerous and deadly neighborhood in San Francisco. The police don't even go there unless they have two officers minimum in a car. Very few San Franciscans have ever been to Hunters Point. Fewer still ever want to go.
A number of the people living at the Hunters Point projects are welfare suckers. They are suckers, not recipients, because many of them are eventually charged with welfare fraud. They suck our resources dry and contribute nothing but refuse for the sewer system. The place is a breeding ground for the worst, the ugliest and the most disgusting behavior any society can imagine. The public housing project at Hunters Point is a cancer in an otherwise healthy and beautiful City.
The first and most obvious thing the Hunters Point criminals all have in common is the color of their skin. Most of them, but not all, are black. The heavy preponderance of black people living at the Hunters Point projects wrongly suggests that there is something very dangerous and evil about the black people living there. Racism is a real danger.
San Francisco's history is filled with black men and women who have substantially contributed to the history of this City. One of the most beautiful and serene places in San Francisco (and as far away from Hunters Point as you can get and still be within the City limits) is the Presidio. There, at the San Francisco National Cemetery, are the graves of decorated and honored veterans of the United States military. Among them are many black soldiers. Some of them were members of the famous Buffalo Soldiers, among the most honored in American history.
Since the earliest days of San Francisco, black citizens have been working side-by-side with white, Hispanic and Asian San Franciscans to build the City we have today. This City has never been a "white" city. It has been a rainbow city from its birth. The San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society is doing a remarkable job of bringing these facts to light. The Society represents the REAL black community in San Francisco. If you would like to know more about the true black community in San Francisco, take the time to visit the Society's website at: sfblackhistory.org
The Hunters Point Punks, however, are the worst enemies of San Francisco's black citizens. They seem to hate their own race and they obviously do everything they can to give their race the worst reputation possible. It is easy to look at what is happening out at Hunters Point and conclude that black people in some way are responsible for the horror. That is categorically untrue. Black people are not the criminals. In many cases, black citizens are the victims.
Many of the black people living at Hunters Point are the victims of their own children - and nothing can be more sad than that.
In addition to increasing police presence, in addition to stiffer sentencing, in addition to cameras and gun-shot detectors, in addition to everything we do to fight the problem - in addition to it all - we need to get some help to those people out there - because some of the people living in the projects out there are honest, law-abiding San Franciscans and they are victims themselves. Some of them are single mothers who have no criminal record at all and who are struggling against seemingly impossible odds to raise a child in the middle of Hell.
When will help be on the way for those mothers? Who is going to send the help? When will it start? Why has it been so long coming? Who is responsible? How can we make changes? We need to get those mothers and their children out of Hunters Point. We need to do something that will give those mothers a fighting chance.
And what about the seniors? There are a lot of black senior citizens living in the projects. My God! They are targets. No San Franciscan and no American Citizen should be housed inside a place where future maximum security prisoners live without any security at all.
How would you like to live in the projects at Hunters Point? Would you even think that you are still in America? How long do you think you would survive and how long could you live with that intense level of fear?
If you and I don't want to live there, then we need to do something to send a lifeline to the innocent, law-abiding citizens who do live there. We need to get them out of that war zone. It wouldn't be as difficult a task as one might think. After all, the number of innocent, law-abiding people living at the projects are a minority. They need to be rescued.
As for the punks, a dream scenario (although quite impossible to do), would be to bring over some of those big dark California Department of Corrections buses and load them up with the punks and take them home where they belong - San Quentin. Then the civil community can relax.
A real solution is not as easy and clear as our wishful thinking. Nobody at City Hall seems to have any solidly good ideas. One thing, however, is certain. While we're waiting for the Mayor and Board of Supervisors to come up with a good plan that will work, we need to get the innocent people living at the Hunters Point projects out of harm's way and protect those San Franciscans from danger. Then we can concentrate on seriously ripping into those gangs with some heavy-duty military-style policing, if that thought ever occurs to anybody at City Hall.
But right now there are some actions we, as citizens, can take while we wait for our City government to catch up. If you would like to learn more about what you can do to make a difference in the lives of the people in Hunters Point, visit BMAGIC's Youth and Family Resource Guide or contact the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation at .
Learn more about any of the following San Francisco organizations struggling to win over the hearts and minds of the young people at Hunters Point: America's Fathers and Grandfathers Against Teen Violence, Brothers Against Guns, CHALK, the Idriss Stelley Foundation, 100% College Prep Institute, Bayview - Hunter's Point Beacon Center, City College of San Francisco's Second Chance Program, Edgewood Children's Center, the Gloria R. Davis College Prep Academy, the Kipp Bayview Academy, Project Rebound, Reach Out for the Rainbow After School Program, SARAI, Young Scholars Program, Family Restoration House, Young Community Developers, MYEEP, MYTP, Bayview Healing Arts Center, Bayview - Hunters Point Homeless Resource Center, Black Infant Health Improvement Project, BVHP Mental Health Services, Children's System of Care, Positive Directions, Youth Power Project, BAYCAT, Children's Book Project, Hunters Point Community Youth Project Foundation, BVHP Family Resource Center, Family Mosaic Project, Horizons Unlimited, Hunters Point Boys and Girls Club, Infusion One, Jumpstart, Parents Who Care, Renaissance Youth Movement, Take Wings Foundation, Turning Heads, United Playaz, Vision YouthZ. To learn more about any of these organizations please download the complete resource guide in .pdf format from BMAGIC. Download the entire guide here!
I know I have missed many fine and wonderful community organizations and for that I apologize. The complete list will be found in the BMAGIC resource guide.
Someday, if we all get behind this effort together, we may be able to create a peaceful and beautiful bay-side San Francisco neighborhood community - the community all the Bayview and Hunters Point people working so hard as volunteers dream of every day. They need our help, they need our money and they need our hearts.
Click on any of the following links from the Museum of the City of San Francisco to learn more about the many contributions to San Francisco's history made by black citizens:
From the Diary of Alvin Coffey, African American 49er – 1849
Biography of William Leidesdorff
Biography of Adah Isaacs Menken
African American Rights During the Gold Rush Era
Slavery and California Statehood by Rockwell D. Hunt – 1850
San Francisco and the Civil War, by Charles B. Turrill – 1861
Lower California as a Negro Home – 1891
Zulu Prince with Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Alcatraz – 1899
“Bishop Arnett on the Negro” – 1900
Refugee Revolt at Lafayette Square – 1906
Black-oriented Barbary Coast Resorts, Cabarets, and Saloons – 1908-1910
Henry Starr, Early Radio Entertainer - 1931
Gladys Bentley at Mona's Club 440 – 1942
“Japanese-Negro Fifth Column” – 1942
Autobiography of Thomas Fleming of the Sun-Reporter
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3 comments:
Wow, sounds accurate. I never visited Hunters Point until my son was assigned to Malcolm X Academy (elementary school). Second day of school yesterday, I couldn't leave the school because of Code Blue lockdown of school, as gunshot were heard outside school. Also, could smell some kind of toxic smell in area.
Hello my name is Jonah Hopton I am a high school student in a documentary film program and I am really interested in what you have to say about hunters point. Please contact me at or
Aloha. I grew up during my preteen and teenage years there at Hunters Point from 1957-1965, before it became what you now describe as. City Hall and the Mayor need to step in and take leadership in cleaning the Point........
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